Like so much else this weekend, the box office was a complete disaster! Everything was ruined, including a beloved franchise and the careers of two beloved actors. All is rot and ash now, so let's sift through it.

1) Voyage of the Dawn Treader — $24.5M
Greetings, peasants. Why didn't you filthy fuckers go see this big beautiful movie that adorable British people made for you? Don't we throw enough ducats your way every few weeks for you miserable assholes to save up enough to go see a Chronicles of Narnia movie? Apparently not! Apparently you have better things to do with your tiny, pathetic lives. This movie didn't do even half as well as the movie that came before it, Prince Caspian, so that's pretty disappointing for them. Personally I'm not surprised, because this franchise, for all of its big-time literary pedigree, kind of sucks the big one. And there are soooo many books in it, it was going to slow down and whimper and die on the side of the road (like all of you worthless peons will too, just so you know) eventually. I think it's better that it happened sooner rather than later. Now they can say "Well, we made a trilogy" and not be too embarrassed when they slink off back into the darkness and are never heard from again. (Like you should do, go slink, go go go, go away, useless fools. I've no need for you!!!)

2) The Tourist — $17M
Yiiiikes. OK, so seventeen million dollars is definitely more than I make in a year, so it's a lot of money, but when you consider that two of AmeroEurope's biggest stars (they're really more Europe's than ours at this point, I think you'd resignedly agree) are in it together and it cost $100 million to make, it really should have done a lot better. Oh, and it's holiday season! People are supposed to be going to the movies like crazy right now, because movies... are like Christmas? I don't know the reasoning behind it, but the philosophy is there. People are supposed to be going to movies right now. And yet. I blame the marketing for the movie. Well, I mean, I blame the movie. For looking so awful! Doesn't it look so awful? Like who cares about that movie? Who cares about some blah blah goo-gaw that's happening in Venice completely nonsensically? And why don't we care, dear readers? Because, duh, Johnny Depp looks terrible in the trailers! Just terrible! What happened to our lovable Gilbert Grape? Time came and did something to him that is sad and weird and makes me miss the '90s (I always miss the '90s, always, but never more than right now). I don't know. I think the ads for this movie just made people feel something itchy and uncomfortable under the skin, some gnawing, some sad tug from something old and faraway. And that's not a good Christmastime feeling.

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3) Tangled — $14.5M
This one keeps trucking along. Does its success mean anything for Mandy Moore's career, do you think? What if she just became like Jodi Benson times a million? Just doing all the animated movies and whatnot. That wouldn't be a bad life, huh? I mean, it'd be better than this. (Oh god, remember that? How they tried to sex her up and make her dance? Showbiz is a sad, cruel thing guys. Sad and cruel.. Cruel and sad.)

4) How Harry Potter Got His Groove Back — $8.5M
Not that he ever lost his groove really, it'd just be fun to see Harry Potter on a Caribbean vacation with Whoopi Goldberg and falling in love with Taye Diggs. That would be such a good, weird movie to make for the Harry Potter franchise! "Tell us, J.K. What are you going to do next?" "I'm gonna get real weird with it. Harry's goin' to Jamaica!!" If only the world worked that way. Instead of the way it does actually work, broken and weird and Decembery all the time and on Monday mornings everyone's mad and tired.

6) Black Swan — $3.3M
This movie is boffo box office biz! $37K per screen average!! It's only on 90 screens in the whole country and it was the sixth highest-grossing movie of the weekend. That is a serious endorsement of Natalie Portman's star appeal. And that comes at quite an important juncture in her career, as she has her first big bubbly stupid looking romantic comedy coming out (some horrorshow with Ashton Kutcher that has the Harvard beauty screaming "Why can't we just have sex???!" in public, like a common asshole, like a peasant) and then she's in Thor, her first big superhero movie. So it's very important that everyone think Natalie Portman is a big, big movie star, and if Black Swan's boffo success is any indication, she is. Everyone loves Natalie Portman. You know what, let's just look at pictures of Natalie Portman for the rest of the day. Everything else can wait. There's always tomorrow. And thank god for that.